24 Responses to Your Sunday Sermon Notes

Our priest who, sadly, is leaving us tomorrow, preached on detachment. He told a funny story – and as a result I laughed during a sermon, I think for the first time.

He explained that when he was a seminarian his spiritual director visited him, and asked to be given a statue of which the seminarian was fond. “I want it. Give it to me”. Later, the seminarian visited his S.D. in his office and saw the statue there. “I want it. Give it to me”. This tit for tat went on for a while, apparently.

In the Byzantine Rite today for the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, we were told that salvation comes at a very high price, the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ and our daily denial of ourselves and taking up of our crosses, which is our participation in His Cross, with which we are marked at our Baptism.

Was Catechetical Sunday here, and the three goals of catechesis (to inform, form and transform) were expanded upon in like of the three scriptural readings and in light of the beginning of the program year for PSR and JYM. Was nicely done (not by me, we had a visitor).

This morning our assistant chaplain contrasted the authority of the popes and bishops which comes from God with the authority of elected representatives which according to our thinking comes from the people. Those of us raised in the United States and other republican cultures too often feel entitled to criticize the ecclesiatical authorities the same way we do civil authorities. St Paul and St Theresa of Avila confronted the pope but 1. They were saints and 2. It was face to face

My PP, Msgr. Keith Barltrop, gave a fantastic sermon on accepting the Cross which Christ gives each one of us. He noted that part of our cross is taking Christ into the hostile, secular, world in which we live, despite the difficulties of doing that. Msgr. also said that God chose the lowest tribe in the Middle East to be His Chosen People, and likewise that God chooses us, as unlikely as we are, to take His Love and His Good News out to others. Msgr. challenged us all as it is Home Mission Sunday and we are the home missionaries.

*sigh* not really, except for the dreaded happy-clappy, wacky-sacky “no matter what people do, we should still love them” sermon. :( However, I really loved the second reading today. St. James is very clear about faith and works, and I think it would be a good ‘un to commit to memory. :D

First day back for the choir, and my first time to sing with them. Our organist is a tremendous musician, so the music was Heavenly. The choir wasn’t perfect, but we will improve. Our new, youngish priest gave another of his homilies in which he focused on “the struggles of a gay teen leaning to embrace his sexuality” (?). Apparently, this is a theme dear to his heart, because each of the three homilies I’ve heard him deliver so far have featured the same sentence, more or less verbatim. A woman in the choir burst in spontaneous applause and gave him two big “thumbs up” which I found a bit disconcerting. Maybe she has a gay teen. Otherwise, Mass was lovely.

Father talked for a while about temptation, saying that that is the adversary’s only real power over us. He can attempt to tempt us but we can resist. He suggested prayer and fasting as particularly good ways to embrace our crosses and avoid temptation.

Excellent sermon on humility. He actually began by pointing out the unfortunate and common use of the word ‘absolutely’ these days and said that it means there is nothing greater. Only God is absolute. He gave us all a pretty good examination of conscience.

I made mass saturday evening. I went again sunday evening to meet my sister who was in town. The priest there gave a sermon which was on accepting your crosses in life. He was an old man and a good speaker, he brought up a book he read by a presbyterian minister about why bad things happen to good people. He talked about losing a child and other tragedies and how one could either stomp their feet and shake their fists at God or they can accept their “cross” in union with Jesus’ cross, and added ” We used to call that offering it up to God ” which I thought was what we still called it.

Fr. K. talked about the crosses we all bear (he named many, which was very moving) and how Isaiah’s constant faith in God, as expressed in the first reading, was what we need to cling to in order to carry our crosses and aspire to Heaven. In this week of sadness (9/11, embassy attacks, etc.), in my not-too-far from-DC parish, Father K.’s words were truly comforting. Nothing is perfect, and we may be asked to bear a very, very heavy cross, but we will never carry it in darkness.

For me this homily was even more meaningful in light of the funeral Mass I attended on Friday. It’s hard to say goodbye to someone who suffered a debilitating illness, died at a relatively young age and was a wonderful husband, father and citizen of his beloved country.

Please join me in praying for our military members serving overseas and in harm’s way, and especially for the chaplains, who minister to so many people but have rare opportunities to be present weekly to the faithful of their own church/denomination. That’s a huge cross to bear, although it’s also a pearl of great price.

The priest just took shots at the “pre-Vatican II” church and spilled typical liberal spirit of Vatican II talking points…it was the Parishes 50th anniversary ummm “celebration.” I’ll avoid saying anything more, lest I have to go to confession again.

Father delivered a strong sermon on humility. He discussed the gospel reading wherein the guests all want the best seat at the banquet. Jesus watches them and tells them it is better to sit at the less “important” end, since none of us are as important as we think we are and could very likely be asked to move to make way for another person. Where will we be asked to sit when we meet our heavenly host? Where will we belong atbthe table? Similarly, we should not collect and amass as many things as we can and thus consider ourselves successful. We are fools to think these things matter. What is important is the daily pursuit of humility and holiness, true wealth.

Of course these are all familiar themes to us and never lose their importance. But it is extra nice to hear a homily delivered in a manner which enhances what you are hearing. And Father never disappoints. I often wish his homilies were longer and feel a twinge of regret when he is finished. I am grateful, however, knowing how busy he must be.

NancyP: it was good to read your post, although I am very sorry about the funeral you attended this week and will join you in your prayers. I have been carrying my own cross for quite a while and yes, you are right, it has been a very sad week, which has touched me deeply. But your words and those of others here which also referred to the cross were a reminder of hope, that none of us is alone, and we need to carry on, remembering to always try to move towards the light.

I went down to St. John the Baptist, the Capuchin Church on 31st St. in Manhattan. The subway train I was on got stuck endlessly at 42nd St. When I finally got out at 34th St., I almost ran the four blocks or so to the church, but I was late, and got there partway through the homily, given by one of the friars. He spoke of how real Christian meditation differed from the New Age kind, since Christian prayer is meant to be focused on God, not on yourself as it is in some other kinds of meditation (I wish I’d been there for the first part, so I could have learned what group of people he was thinking about and what led him to talk about them). Then, right there in the pulpit, he began giving us instructions in how to do lectio divina. He explained the stages of read — reflect — respond. It was really intriguing. I enjoyed the sermon but I felt the Mass was way too short, because then I had to go out again having barely caught my breath!

Visiting a church in Maine, the homily started off OK, the theme taken from the letter of James, how faith without works is dead and how we have to actually live out our faith. Unfortunately from there it descended to a rant about how we must not hate, taking the example of political discourse in this country and then the current unrest in the Mideast which he claimed was started by a movie insulting the Muslim faith made by 2 Coptic Christians i.e. Christians are the haters. At this point I wanted to raise my hand and say “but Father …” but resisted the temptation. Of course the “movie” was a YouTube video that has been out for a while and the unrest appears to have been premeditated by ant-western Islamic groups, most likely Al-Queda behind it. The video is a red herring, that is not what is causing unrest in the Middle East, it is the same struggle between the West and militant Islam that has been ongoing for some time. Those Coptic Christians have been in Egypt since the 4th century, long predating Islam, yet are being systematically persecuted with not a whimper from the West, not to justify the video but perhaps we can understand their feelings.

As for the political discourse, there seems to be a tendency especially by those on the left to label all expressed anger against a position they hold as “hate”. There are real issues at stake this November, many people are angry at what is going on, for example the administration’s anti-Catholic policies, the crony capitalism, the wasted stimulus, and so on. I do not see what is wrong with righteous anger, after all Jesus was angry at the money changers and sellers in the Temple.

Between that and having to ensure the usual irritations and distractions of the Ordinary Form it was a difficult experience. I can’t wait to get back to our regular church back home and its orthodox preaching and worship.

Correction – Of course the Copts have been in Egypt before the 4th century, it was actually in 451 (I think) that they separated from Rome over the Council of Chalcedon, but had been a presence going back to their founding traditionally by St. Mark i.e. the 1st Century.

Happily, I was at the monthly Sunday TLM given in our diocese and so listened to the sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost. The sermon contained points (in my own words) describing how humility is born from not just keeping the commandments but in loving Jesus more in the way St. Paul
explains to the Ephesians–“to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man, that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth:, to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. ..” This actually gave me an intellectual (and physical) headache (probably the surpassing all knowledge part got to me here), so I offered the headache to St. Rita and to Jesus and prayed to believe rather than understand and instead reflected on “that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. Now to Him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us…”.
Fr. said God gives us more than we expect; we should not close ourselves off to His graces by not allowing Him to work in us, and I thought further, since we are His work of salvation, provided we are faithful and Fr. said the worthy reception of the Eucharist enables us to do this and live in Him.

Back from traveling and safely tucked into the comfort and safety of TLM, our Fr. spoke boldly of the three letter “s” word and mortal sin. Purity and Chastity were on topic as well. It was the best sermon ive ever heard on the topic, which is one it seems most priests skirt around. We heard plainly the Church’s teaching on the marrital privelage, intended only for use in a manner that leads to the procreative act and anything outside that – any thought or glance or touch – by anyone is plainly and always a mortal sin. Mortal sin destroys the life of grace received at baptism, makes you slave of satan and an enemy of Christ. These mortal sins unrepented will go before you on the last day “like a hellbeast”.

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“Only one sin is nowadays severely punished: the attentive observance of the traditions of our Fathers. For that reason the good ones are thrown out of their places and brought to the desert.”

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- St. John Paul II

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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